Louise meets King Tut and Terracotta

It was a year of great exhibitions and enormous egos, but only once did the two coincide, with the marvellous lifetime retrospective of that fiercely indomitable genius, the nonagenarian sculptress Louise Bourgeois. Her works - still on show at Tate Modern - are a marvel of drama and invention compared with Doris Salcedo's crack (as it's known) dividing the Turbine Hall below, which has so far injured many gallery-goers without achieving its supposedly geopolitical point.

Gilbert & George, given a whole floor of TM, proved that they get dumb and dumber and more pompous by the year. Damien Hirst made the most expensive contemporary art work yet - the diamond skull - and got the headlines he wanted. Antony Gormley, messianic as ever, erected casts of his own body, genitals to the fore, all around the South Bank.

But it was a tremendous year for foreign bodies - a phalanx of the Terracotta warriors, each unique and with real force of personality, travelled from China. King Tut came to the Dome. And who can forget the astonishment of coming upon the naked Voltaire, emaciated but smiling in 3D, among the revolutionary portraits - including David's Marat - in the magnificent Citizens and Kings at the Royal Academy.

Old masters were out in force. The Queen found a Caravaggio in a cupboard - Christ urging Peter and Andrew to become fishers of men, their dilemma brilliantly represented by a hooked fish - and showed it with other Italian masterpieces. Frans Hals proved equal to Rembrandt at the National Gallery. Compton Verney had a haunting show of that master of candlelight, Georges de la Tour.

Mark Wallinger, artist-philosopher, rightly won the Turner Prize in Liverpool, and there were other beacons across the country: William Blake in Hull, Pop Art in Wolverhampton, Warhol and Picasso in Edinburgh, a beautiful new museum in Middlesbrough.

Not many newcomers to rave about, but not many farewells either, apart from that most complex and literary painter RB Kitaj. Nicholas Penny, scholar and moderniser, got the directorship of the National Gallery he deserved.

Top 10

1 Citizens and Kings Royal Academy

2 Terracotta Army British Museum

3 The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection Queen's Gallery

4 Louise Bourgeois Tate Modern

5 Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals National Gallery

6 Sophie Calle French Pavilion, Venice Biennale

7 Georg Baselitz Royal Academy

8 Mark Wallinger Tate Britain

9 Millais Tate Britain

10 Andy Warhol Royal Scottish Academy

Turkey: Tracey Emin at the Venice Biennale - too weak to peel a grape

Awards

Tiffany award: Damien Hirst, for his £50m diamond bauble

Golden Goose award: Andy Warhol, who makes more money for hedge-fund managers than stocks and shares

Derren Brown award: Stella Vine for convincing people that she can paint

Mary Poppins award: Thomas Schutte for his pigeon hotel on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Sq